| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: constant low fever that during the month of January he was obliged to
keep his bed, though he refused to see a doctor. Comte Adam became
very uneasy about him; but the countess had the cruelty to remark:
"Let him alone; don't you see it is only some Olympian trouble?" This
remark, being repeated to Thaddeus, gave him the courage of despair;
he left his bed, went out, tried a few amusements, and recovered his
health.
About the end of February Adam lost a large sum of money at the
Jockey-Club, and as he was afraid of his wife, he begged Thaddeus to
let the sum appear in the accounts as if he had spent it on Malaga.
"There's nothing surprising in your spending that sum on the girl; but
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this
unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word,
but not too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that
the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round
with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made,
and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their
denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of manliness,
Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his
was a mind which shrank from pity: have you ever watched in such
a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is pressing it as a grief
may be really a source of contentment, either actual or future,
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: And she said nothing more.
"Are you--a-- going over the Simplon?" Winterbourne pursued,
a little embarrassed.
"I don't know," she said. "I suppose it's some mountain.
Randolph, what mountain are we going over?"
"Going where?" the child demanded.
"To Italy," Winterbourne explained.
"I don't know," said Randolph. "I don't want to go to Italy.
I want to go to America."
"Oh, Italy is a beautiful place!" rejoined the young man.
"Can you get candy there?" Randolph loudly inquired.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Indeed!" cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness peeping out
of her face again. "And is it lawful, now, to inquire what the
secret is?"
"Surely; it is to disclose it that I have come," answered Owen
Warland. "You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess the
secret! For, Annie,--if by that name I may still address the
friend of my boyish years,--Annie, it is for your bridal gift
that I have wrought this spiritualized mechanism, this harmony of
motion, this mystery of beauty. It comes late, indeed; but it is
as we go onward in life, when objects begin to lose their
freshness of hue and our souls their delicacy of perception, that
Mosses From An Old Manse |
